Edible Tulip

Spring Began A Month Ago (or Rosedale Rant)

Violets on the north bank as I descended down the Old Beltline Trail in Rosedale on a hot day in mid-April. Simon, my dog, and I were actually looking to check out this dog area I had discovered online called Dog Patch. The website looked fantastic - an off leash rural playground with rivers and dales in a forested area near Don Valley Brick Works. I didn't much like the trail we took to get there, it was busy, not that secluded, and holy p'jesus was it ever obvious we were in Rosedale. Obviously Simon and I have been sheltered from dog prejudice because we tend to run the waterfront in the middle of winter, the marshy area around the Humber River where the fishermen flock, and the trails and parks and swamps and ponds and rivers and forests that extend for hundreds of miles beyond the outskirts of the city. I don't want to assume a stereotype and the idea certainly never crossed my mind when we began our walk but god almighty you'd think that the women who we ran into have never seen a dog over 10 lbs. Let alone a MIXED BREED. That looks like the wolf in little red riding hood. When he grins, I want to put a bonnet on his head. Simon is an exhuberant dog and the people we typically run into think he's one of the happiest, handsomest, most playful furry creatures they've ever met. Not so in Rosedale. On leash, Simon can pull when he sees another dog. He wants to say hello to everyone, human or canine, that we cross paths with. It appeared from our walk that most people in that neighbourhood have fluffy goofy (I won't say stupid) Golden Retrievers or lap dogs in booties (in spring, I might add). The exertion it must have taken to keep their dogs away from Simon and to also avoid making any eye contact with me must have enabled these women to scarf down a snickers bar after their walk in good conscience. It wasn't just one or two people we passed on the trail; it was EVERYONE. I kept whispering to Simon that it wasn't him; it was that I had worn my camoflauge capris and a tanktop and thus I had revealed us as interlopers. Simon did get into this enormous mucky creek toward the end of our walk and I was simply terrified/hopeful that we'd pass someone in an all white hiking outfit and he'd perform one of his more flamboyant shakes.

Re: Dog Patch. The places was desterted. One of the fences was buried under the weight of a mudslide from construction on a mega million dollar home up above. There was yellow caution tape wrapped around the entrances. A lock on the door. And a copy of a letter from the President of The Toronto Humane Society that had been sent to the Toronto Star about 6 months earlier denouncing the hysteria people have about dogs in public places and the very few incidents that actually do occur when people and dogs interact. I googled Dog Patch to see what went down. It looked like it had fantastic potential - an entirely cordoned off area in the middle of the forested ravine that included rocks and a water source. Did the ladies of Rosedale rebel? Was it too much like watching a cock fighting show? Too disgraceful to see dogs growl and hump and sniff as they are wont to do with one another in good fun. Dog Patch was a conjoined effort between the Toronto Humane Society and The City of Toronto to provide healthy dog play and interaction in a safe environment. Who shut it down?

As someone who has a rescue dog who has simply become the best dog in the world, I am saddened and discouraged that after all the Toronto Humane Society does for abandoned and abused dogs, that a positive intention and investment such as a fenced in dog patch would somehow cause an uproar.

Beaver Sighting at the Humber River

There's a resident beaver, so I've been told, who resides in a dam on the west side of the Humber River north of Bloor. If I'd known that before traipsing around in the sticks and marsh-like mud and muck that extends down into the waterway that is a true urban dilemma - a fast running body of water full of fisherman, 2 canoeists and a beaver but sadlly due south of a water treatment plant so the area of land where the water has recessed is tattered with depleted plastic bags, hospital latex gloves, cardboard, fishing string, and chunks of floating foam. It was in the high 20s today - the first real glimpse of warmth for months and the walk through the new buds and ground growth was almost explosive with happiness. The garbage strewn everywhere however is depressing. And worrisome. Someone at the park told me a friend's dog got giardia from the Humber and had to be put on I.V. I won't deny my dog one of the nicest walks in the city for fear of maybe contracting something but I did scratch my leg badly on something and then have to wade into the river to retrieve Simon's ball (big shout out to all the retrievers at High Park who CONSTANTLY fetch Simon's bobbing ball for him as it floats down the rivlets). And when the cuts began to scratch I instantly became concerned with Staph and E Coli infections seeping into my bloodstream. I'd rather eat a fish with a bit of mercury in it who has been lured from a sparkling clear creekbed than worry about contracting a viral infection from a fast moving river through the city.

So, anyway, we ran into a HUGE beaver just hanging out in a tangle of dried sticks and mulch. Simon didn't even see it. I was watching Simon as he went straight for the water, went out up to his neck and sat down to immerse his full body. He won't swim but he'll wade. He won't jump off a dock like a retriever but he'll race out as far as he can with his feet still touching the bottom to fetch a stick. So as Simon sort of flits about like a minnow I see this enormous brown furry blob scurry off just a foot to the left of where I'm standing. Things then went blurry. Simon was at my side, I was trying to leap over an enormous fell tree trunk and the beaver was idly pushing itself off shore. I'm not sure what would have happened had Simon and the beaver met face to face, I don't know how vicious the buck-toothed creature really is, but I have a feeling by the pure might of its muscle and its bravado, story to follow, that it would have grabbed Simon by the nose and tugged him out into the river. I would then have to had bit my hypochondria adieu and raced in after him. But no, the beaver slinked underwater, and re-emerged downstream. Simon at this point was only picking up the scent and back at the beaver's sly stage exit. I walked south along the river and couldn't see the beaver anywhere. After a while, I looked out into the middle of the river - which spans about 75 metres in width - and I see the goddamn beaver fighting against the stream. He's swimming upriver into a fast current and is only a few feet from being swept over a dam into whirlpools. He's having the fight of his life. I notice a Japanese couple on the other side of the river with their cameras out and pointing and holy shit this beaver's fot fans rooting for him on both divides. He dives down to evade the fastest part of the current, pokes his sleek head upstream, and then swims on an angle to the other side of the river where he pulls himself out of the river and collapses out of exhaustion. After my experience with Simon, the deer and the Old Mill residents a few weeks ago I get him on leash. We pass an older couple sitting on a bench. I'm still riled up from the beaver's triumph so I say "there's a beaver over there, on the other side of the river, see it, see it right there, that big brown thing, that's a beaver!" They didn't really even look in the direction I was pointing but they thanked me and wished me well. They were American. From the south, it appeared. So now I've gone ahead and ruined Toronto as being chic and urban and cultural to these people. They're going to go back to Alabama and tell everyone they went to Toronto and saw a beaver.

(sadly I didn't have my camera to legitimize my beaver tale. later in the afternoon, we walked in high park. despite not crossing paths with any wild life, we still found a way to get muddy and wet. see picture.)

Super Mutt

I've spent many hours on the internet trying to figure out Simon's genetic make-up. In dogs, their breed(s) are such an integral piece of the mystery of their personalities. Before I received Simon as a "foster dog", I was told he was Shepherd/Husky. (People stop me on the street all the time and throw out their own ideas. I think there's also some Border Collie in him, and maybe even some hound.) Now anyone in their right mind in an apartment in downtown Toronto* at the kickstart of the winter season would pause, for at least a second, to contemplate the undertaking of a dog with that mix. Because I know now, a little terrier or a miniature anything would have been much much easier - the dog wouldn't be able to squash a cat with a paw, it could be picked up and placed somewhere if misbehaving, a long walk would mean around the block, and I could tie it up for 3 minutes in front of the liquor store without my worrying it would jump on someone and claw their eyes out. Simon, in truth, has never clawed anybody's eyes out but he does jump up. It was such an annoying habit of his, based I believe out of insecurity, that the first few months I was petrified to pass anyone on the sidewalk, in a hallway, invite guests over to my apartment, have him in any circumstance where he could jump up, because he inevitably did. Some people are okay with it. Many are not. The point is he shouldn't do it ever. He's too big. And too unpredictable. After many months of working on this, he only jumps up around 3% of the time.

Training a dog is like packing a house up in preparation for a move. You start packing boxes and bags and days go by and yet the house is still full of stuff, there's hardly been an imprint of all of that work, let alone results. For the first 3 months, I worked Simon daily, commanding him to sit, down, stay 20 times a day. We would wrestle in front of his crate when on the 5th day he arrived he would no longer step foot in it. Even when his dinner was in there. He had decided the couch was preferable. I was in tears that night when through the saliva and vigour of both of us I succeeded in getting him in to the crate against his almighty protestations. I might have felt more badly but when his body went limp and he gave in he was in essence passing over the authority torch and I knew the significance of that.

It is difficult when you have a rescue dog who begins to take over your life. You have mixed emotions. Part of you feels like a saviour; the dog is a poor helpless creature who has been locked up in a cage, nearly euthanized, and devoid of attention and love. The instinct is to buy all sorts of expensive treats - dried liver, venison snacks, chicken jerky - get him a soft pillowy bed, give him lots of hugs and kisses, talk in a baby voice, and sacrifice your entire social life in order to make sure he isn't left alone. Do this, however, and your dog will whip your ass. He will jump up on your bed when he returns from a muddy walk. He will ignore you when you ask him to do something let alone command him. He'll growl at you if you try to take a toy away. He'll take over your life and make it so miserable you will lie in bed wondering how you spent hundreds of dollars adopting this awful creature, hundreds more securing his good health, endless hours making him chicken and rice for dinner, countless walks a day in weather no human should have to endure, and enabled yourself to almost get a concussion, a broken wrist, and the sorest ass in history from all that hiking in deep snow. I have been there. I have had those moments where I secretly hoped I could find someone else to adopt him. Maybe a nice family with teenagers who live in the country and he can ride around the back of a pickup truck. It'd be better for him, I thought. The reality is he is deeply attached to me. As I am to him. And he is unmistakably happy. The hard truth was that I was letting him rule the house and that was making me miserable and exhausted and losing weight. I am not good at confrontation. Even with a canine, apparently. I'm 115 pounds, Simon is 60+ pounds but his dead weight when he wants it to be is much stronger than anything I can muster. I learned pretty early on, although we still battle it out sometimes, that I had to turn into some sort of General, when required, and through patience and fairness, show this dude who's boss.

*(The reality of Simon's genetic make-up, that hyperactive hunting husky in him, means that the key to his good behaviour is simply exercise. For those who think it unfair to have a big dog in a city, when you enter into the rescue dog world there is no choice of an estate with a big backyard in Rosedale, or a home in the suburbs. These dogs require a lot of work and they are being fostered out because they have been unadoptable. A dog alone all day in a backyard is not necessarily a happy dog. Nor is one left to roam free in the countryside getting into all sorts of danger and mischief. I have undertaken the responsibility of making sure he gets out 4 times a day both for long, leisurely, urban leash walks and for ample play time where he can run hard for at least an hour a day. We have friends at the dog parks we visit but for the most part we try to include off leash trails and ravine meanderings into our regime. Luckily, my folks live north of the city and we go often and walk for hours along stretches of the Bruce Trail.)

The following dog books are my favourite so far for anyone looking to learn the basics of understanding dogs and how to effectively communicate with your dog. In addition to these, I ordered about 14 more through the Toronto Public Library and whipped through those too.

The Monks of New Skete. Divine Canine. The Monks' Way to a Happy, Obedient Dog. Everything You Need to Know.

Good Owners, Great Dogs. A Training Manual for Humans and Their Canine Companions. By Brian Kilcommons and Sarah Wilson. Published by Warner Books.

Why Does My Dog Act That Way? A complete guide to your dog's personality. By Stanley Coren. Published by free press.

Hip Ideas for Hyper Dogs. By Amy Ammen and Kitty Foth-Regner. Published by Wiley Publishing.

Simply Simon

I know it’s been 7 months since I posted. I feel like I’m creeping up out of the mulch. The landscape is different. Or at least I see it that way.

Last fall was one of the busiest most exasperating periods of my entire life. I felt burdened. Time was leaching away from me. My days had spiralled into a routine of over-thought chaos. So being my typical impractical self, I got a dog.

I’m convinced that some dogs are meant to be with certain people, and vice versa, and that the universe has a twisted way of making sure they find one another. I picked up Simon literally on the side of a busy road north of Toronto. It felt a bit like a covert operation – driving up to a tattered trailer home on a muddy lot amidst the sprawl of industry, sitting out front of the house because a sign reads “do not get out of your car until the owner comes out of the house”, watching a truck pull in and sit idly in the lot too, and then seeing a large man in a sweat suit with a long white beard emerge out of the front door. He was receiving the other dog. I was there to pick up Simon. And the truck belonged to the woman who was responsible for rescuing these two dogs from the Welland Humane Society before they were put down even though both dogs were only a year and a half in age and non-aggressive. She opened the back of her truck and Simon flew out. As I held his leash firmly, she ran through food, his background, her experience with him, what to do and not to do, all in less than five minutes. I brought Simon over to the car, obviously nervous about jumping in with a stranger, he required some coaxing, but then he got in and sat in the back seat looking out the window. Whimpering. Simon’s soft whine is a song I’ve come to know well although it’s abated as his confidence continues to grow.

The first month was probably one of the most hellish of my life. I have two cats. I live in an apartment. Fostering a rescue dog means these dogs are typically in dire circumstances and time is running out. Puppies you can mould and train to become the perfect family pet, these dogs are not. They require patience, discipline, unconditional love, and more of the same, until you think you don’t have an inch of patience left in your body, then they require love, and then when you try to discipline, they will test your patience all over again.

It became clear to me immediately that Simon had a few issues. He was afraid of Asians, in general. I live a block from Korea town. And so began our long walks along Bloor Street. As a person with various anxieties, I knew you had to face down your fears or they would grow and manifest into larger problems. He chased cars. While on a leash. Which meant his 60 lb. body flew up into the air and lunged towards moving vehicles, bicycles, motorcycles, buses, trucks, etc. He was frightened of children – they are often screaming and they run like prey. Umbrellas, homeless people, joggers, skateboarders, shrouded shrubs, neighbourhood cats, Falun Gong participants in white gloves, Rottweilers – Simon didn’t really like any of them. He’d circle, growl, and even attempt to bite.

The past 5 months, Simon and I walked through various snowstorms at 6 a.m., at midnight, after long gruelling days at the office… rain, snow, sleet, hail, -40 degree weather, we were out in it, 3-4 hours a day. During those initial walks I wouldn’t have dared let him off leash. He was a thrashing, yanking, hyperactive, skittish, unpredictable, stubborn mutt with the habits of a 60-pound squirrel. We would try to run together. Inevitably, he would run too quickly or in movement catch sight of something and pull in the opposite direction. And I’d get pulled down, or pulled up, muddy hillsides after my head had hit the frozen ground with all of the earth’s gravitational force. I fell a total of 4 body crunching times. There was the running away at the Kortright Centre, the running across an ice covered pond and falling in while in pursuit of geese (who were FLYING), the chasing of deer up into the backyards of estate homes near the Old Mill where owners, all female, all royally pissed off, came out to investigate this wild, drooling, wolf-like beast who was tearing up their back gardens chasing 5 deer and whose owner, that’d be me, stood there in an army-green rubber rain suit trying to call a dog who can go wilfully deaf. Not one of our better moments. There have been run-ins with pit bulls, encounters with policemen on horse, and too many discarded chicken bones pulled from his jaws. But there have also been moments of immense joy and fulfillment. He is a different dog now then when we first met. He's tamped down his neuroses, shed his anxieties, plays well with other dogs, mostly comes when called, is patient with me when I'm slowly waking up in the morning. When we're in the woods clawing through the thaw of 3 feet of melting snow or walking together through the thick of a busy urban sidewalk and he’s trotting along with his tail held proudly in the air and one eye cast in my direction there’s something very sweet that exists between us; like my neighbour said to me the other week, I see you two heading out into the day and you just look like you belong together. My thoughts exactly.

More food entries to follow. And a review of The Patisseries of Paris published by The Little Bookroom up next!

F is for Urban Foraging or How to Skin and Dress Squirrel

Urban Foraging is also known as trash picking, dumpster diving, curb crawling, scavenging, and gleaning. Of course, this doesn't solely relate to food; much of urban foraging is all about what one spies and then claims from that peripheral zone known as the side of the curb. I, personally, have many things in my apartment that have come to me simply through a random walk after dinner - a Mennonite table/lamp stand, 2 art deco orange armless chairs, an Edwardian couch, several pieces of art, a few enormous pinecones, a bird's nest, a pellet from a shotgun, a bee hive, and a purple glass ball that I trash-picked when I was 5 years old and I've carried it around ever since. I like the idea of recovering items that have simply worn out their use someplace but still have life held within them, something to offer to someone new, and the acquisition doesn't require the exchange of money or the plundering of new materials. I apply the same philosophy in pets (why breed one when several already exist?) and cars. Food? Well, although I forage from gardens, I'm not nearly so adventurous when it comes to food that's been either swept up off the floor or taken from a former diner's plate. Let alone road kill. But I'll get to that later.

An extreme form of urban foraging is known as Freeganism. What is a Freegan? The www.freegan.info website states that freegans "embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed." The goal is to live as minimally dependent as possible on the conventional economic structure while consuming the least amount of resources. I do not take a political or social stand on this. I'm all for vegans and freegans but I would rather people participate in the concepts of food democracy/policy/security on a legitimate level than form an anarchy that subsists of hungry, angry, anarchists who eat larvae-infested car crash possum. Grow a garden. Get into an urban elementary school and start a seed workshop, a salad bar, any alternative to over-done roast beef, hash browns, and gravy made from a powdered mix. I think a lot of our waste issues has to do with food standards and quality assurance. It’s pretty hard for restaurants to get rid of already cooked or prepared foods. There is so much waste involved. How can that be resolved? My concerns with food waste tend to revolve around both large and small groceries. At Loblaws I’ve often seen produce managers plucking away perfectly good bananas with only a smidgeon of speckling about to occur in order to freshly display a pile of green under ripe inedible ones. Do we just want a banana or do we care where it comes from, what are the politics involved, how much mileage (and therefore gas) does a food product travel before it hits our shelves. For those who are concerned about electricity, hydro, energy, gas, fuel sustainability, a large focal point of the “eat locally” (i.e. most of your food at least fresh food comes from within a 90 km radius of where you buy it from) movement is the simple fact that if your food doesn’t have a lot of mileage to travel than the resources it requires to get to you are minimal. If your rice is from Thailand and your meat from Bolivia and your cheese from Italy and you want ugli fruits from Singapore and figs from California and bananas from corrupt plantations in the Dominican Republic then your solar panels keep your household use of energy down but your actions override the benefits.

For more on Freeganism, I would check out their website. It’s quite the manifesto with words like infection and sickness and monster and capitalism. There will always be excess in human social communities and civilizations just like there always has been. I encourage any remedy to over consumption and irresponsible mismanagement of food resources. I admit that I prefer the way of Forbes Wild Foods (i.e. cultivating wild and native foods in a sustainable way) over eating from the trash but that’s simply my opinion.

Road Kill
An excerpt taken from the bright green website: "With road kill, the two rules to remember are:

How fresh is it?... stuff killed at night should be taken before the crows get to it at dawn... anything a bit puffy is bad!

How flat is it? If it has been splattered, you'll have fragments of bones, spilled gut contents, etc... Pick roadkill that has been struck a glancing blow, and if necessary, discard any pulpy bits. "

Taken from one of my favourite books on simple and plain living, the Foxfire Books, here is an excerpt on how to skin, dress, and cook squirrel (because if you’re an urban forager eating road kill this will be your most likely entrée): “The most common way of skinning a squirrel in the mountains was to ring the back legs at the feet, and cut around the top of the base of the tail. The hunter then put the squirrel on its back, put his foot on its tail, grabbed its back legs firmly, and pulled. The hide would come off just like a jacket right up to the neck. Then the front legs were pulled up out of the skin and cut off at the feet, and the pelt cut off at the neck. Usually, the head was not skinned out, but if you wanted to, it would be done about the same as with the coon. Cut off the head, back feet, and tail. Then gut.” Straightforward enough directions.

Now here’s how to cook a squirrel (warning: your apartment neighbours let alone roommates might not be so enamoured of the odours): “After soaking the squirrel long enough to get all the blood out, cut it into pieces and roll the pieces in flour, salt, and pepper. Fry until tender and brown. If the squirrel is old, you may want to parboil it in water containing sage to take out the wild taste.” Page 269. The Foxfire Book, Anchor Press/Doubleday 1972.

E is for a small town cafe, a roadside farmer, and a lonely girl graced with chutzpah

Do you ever feel like your heart is sometimes pinned to the sky? I had a weekend like that just recently. A weekend of adventurous repose. A weekend of social introspection. A weekend of profound simplicities.

E is truly for empowerment. For me anyway. Empowerment in the Oxford Thesaurus comes up with authorize, licence, certify as though all of that power lay dormant until you let it free. Which I did. I'll start with myself, which is backwards, but the first in line. Friday I bought a power drill. Something I've been meaning to do as a single woman for a long, long time. It felt good. It felt, dare I say, POWERFUL. It also meant my curtain rod got screwed into the wall that night, my bicycle basket got pinned to my handlebars finally, and at long last, the treasury shelving unit I've been waiting to find, and did so at a garage sale in Mulmer this past weekend, could have a place in my hall to place fallen bee hives, overgrown pinecones, and bird's nest wrested free from the branches by summer winds. Apart from the power drill, I also bought a swiffer. I don't think of myself as a swiffing kind of girl but alas I'm tired of mopping and streaks and cat hair at every turn and the swiffer has solved those irritants rather efficiently. I bought a bicycle tire pump too but it turns out that when I went to pump up my already plump tires (just for novelty's sake) I deflated them. I had the wrong kind of pump. Today I found a sketchy neighbourhood bike store (let's say most of the used bikes are hot, hot, hot) with a kind elderly gentleman who sold me the adapter for my french nodules and it only cost $1.99. I'm finding solutions are simply where you look for them. Then there are the chutzpah pipes (acquired while carrying 80 pound trays of food as a waitress at 19 years of age) that I pull out for emergency situations. Today's emergency was lack of sleep and a 40 degree apartment. I lifted a heavy air conditioner unit, placed it in my bedroom windows after I'd successfully yanked out all panes and screens, and then found in the basement janitor's closet an old dirty piece of wood that I cleaned and fitted and now my bedroom is a balmy 66 degrees. I'm usually exceptionally energy efficient but tonight I must rest.

Read more for the Eggplant Cafe and my EXPOSE on the best dang corn in Ontario. Promise!

D is for Douglas Hospital's Community Gardens

I was in Montreal over the long weekend. A friend of mine, a veritable stud on the Ultimate Frisbee scene, was playing in the Jazz Festival tournament. I got to go along for the ride (a long one) and enjoy some solitude during the day when the boys were off throwing the disc and sweating out beer only to rehydrate with more. I took in many charming sights and experiences along all of the great Rues of that marvelous city including the Canada Parade, an African influenced jazz concert, parkbench sitting in the middle of the woods in Mont Royal Parc, blisters from walking the entire city in plastic flip flops, shopping at les gourmandes supermarches, and practicing the look but don't buy philosophy I've recently undertaken. On the Sunday afternoon, I drove out to the eastern suburb of Verdun where the tournament was being held on the grounds of the Douglas Hospital. It's a beautiful space for the University affiliated research centre in Mental Health with lots of fields and green spaces and a view to the river. Now since I'm not the kind of girl to lounge around smoking Virginia Slims and fanning myself, after 30 minutes of watching the game, I got restless and made my way through the soppy grasses over to plots of green tangles and mud - some of the most verdant land in Verdun to be sure. I was enjoying the beans when a woman with a yappy dog began making her way towards me through the small walkways between garden plots. "And who are you, may I ask?" she said. I should have come up with something clever and witty but instead I fumbled and gave up the truth. Nobody. I'm just a nobody; a tag-along mascot watching a match who adores vegetables. Is inspired by them. Likes to photograph them. And eat them. And open up their encasements like a vulture teething on road-kill. She shooed me away. I picked up a long bean that had fallen wayside onto what I could only determine as neutral ground and made my way slowly back to my prop-up chair. I was just about to turn around and sidle up the side of the gardens to snap a few more photos when I saw her curly hair exposing itself from behind the decorative shrubbery. She was onto me. I had to concede defeat but I held onto that bean for many miles out of Quebec until after I'd fingered it to death, pulling out its interior nodules, and parsing its shell, it began to wilt and that depressed me so I flung it out the car window.

Ken's Eggs

I know when my parent's first built their spectacular house on the hill outside of Creemore more than 10 years ago they knew the importance of making a local friend - someone who lived nearby, who knew the lay of the land and reacted quickly when something instinctively felt amiss, who genuinely took pleasure in his perambulations around the property, and who knew a little about the birds and the bees and the deer and the coyotes and when to plant at which lunar cycle and why if the wind blew from the north on a specific day in April it signified a rainy, colder than usual, arrival of spring.

They found all of that, and much more, in our neighbour Ken. Ken has lived in the neighbouring farm for almost 80 years and his family has farmed that land and lived within the parametres of it for so long that he remembers taking a horse and buggy to the town of Collingwood (I won't mention how he feels about Intrawest and the million dollar golf courses sprouting up all over the coast of Georgian Bay).

Ken usually had a cigarette or a piece of grass dangling from his mouth whenever I ran into him. You had to relax into conversations with him because even if you were in a hurry Ken had no concept of hurry and one thought turned into three thoughts and there was no rushing the silences that interspersed the dialogues. Ken was so smart about so many things (weather, human nature, animal instinct, gardening, the land) that it was almost incomprehensible that he had lived his entire life in a tiny pocket of the world, that he didn't much care for newspapers and current affairs let alone the great literature of the world, and that he spent 99% of his days out on a tractor alone. He was a sieve however and his daily meanderings and general curiosity about the world at large plus made him thoughtful and profoundly philosophical, of course in the most understated way. Many of the extremely wealthy folks who built houses in the area began to understand the importance of having Ken on their side not because he was threatening if he wasn't but because of the great reward of having him around. Nobody could drive up our driveway without Ken noticing from his kitchen window or his tractor fields far removed. He examined tire tracks and bent twigs and always knew who had been where and when.

We sold that house a few years ago and moved not too far away but far away enough that Ken no longer comes to visit. My father still drops by his farm and picks up cartons of his special eggs (blue, white, beige, brown shelled with the brightest yolks you'll ever see). Ken had cancer. So did his wife. They are better now but their life of physical labour has taken its toll. Some people, in fact many, and this makes me so unbearably sad, blow Ken off as a one-tooth, dirty fingered, white trash local nobody. I will spare you the details of the dinner that Ken was invited to by the daughter of a wealthy family who was sitting down to eat when Ken drove up to drop off firewood and the matriarch of the family in front of guests likened Ken to a pig that claws through the dirt of the earth. The new owners of our old house barely spend any time there. Ken told my mother "Don't go back, don't drop by, it'll break your heart". They pulled up all of my mother's gardens and planted shrubs. The cedar trees my parents planted have been eaten down by the deer. The new owners took the magic of the beauty out of it, the nature that evolved with each season, and although they view it as easier maintenance which makes me feel morally spiteful, Ken just shrugs it off and does what he can to let things be as good as they may be.

The Last American Man

"The result is that to the frontier the American Intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness: that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good or for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes from freedom - these are the traits of the frontier..."
- Frederick Jackson Turner

Because reading is as much a part of my life as eating, I want to share what I think of as excellent literary insights into various themes of the world with others. And given that my reading is generally more vibrant and varied than my eating, this may well turn into a blog of books. More often than not, the books I gravitate towards on any given day reflect the struggles or themes of my life at that moment; they seem to illuminate the conflict or the touchstone of what I spend my time thinking about.

"The woods are alive" he said. As the walked through the forest, he explained how the forest floor works, its circularity. The leaves fall from the trees and crumble and decompose and turn into soil. The water seeps into the ground and feeds the roots of the trees; the insects and animals live on the forest floor, eating each other and all the organic material they can find, keeping the cycle going.
Excerpt from The Last American Man, by Elizabeth Gilbert; Viking Penguin, 2002.

This passage reflects a theme in the book (albeit not the major theme) that deals with locality, living off what lies beneath. Eustace Conway, the real live protagonist of the non-fiction book, lives in the Appalachian Mountains wearing skins from animals he trapped and living off the land. More importantly, it reveals his intent on exploring the concept of what it means to be a modern man in America against the backdrop of all the contradictory elements of the American landscape and identity - inventiveness, narcissism, isolation and intimacy.

For a glimpse at the first chapter of this book by Elizabeth Gilbert check out the NPR Reading Room. I suspect afterward many of you will be ordering it from your local library like I did.

On a completely personal and stream-of-consciousness aside, I continue.

A Capon Christmas

Happy New Year to all!

It's been an extraordinary holiday season with not a lot of time left over for percolating thoughts, instead I drank a lot of coffee. January often presents itself as a blank slate, the perfect opportunity for fresh insight, new beginnings, out with the old in with the new philosophies and ideologies, and time to grab a notepad and make doodles pertaining to goals and dreams, some with which to ponder longer (a move to the country? another job change? a book to write? a desire to raise goats? an impulse to keep bees?) and those which need immediate love, affection and attention.

We had capon for Christmas dinner. The night before, the eve so to speak, we traditionally have an elaborate and decadent fish stew made with mussels and clams, shrimp, white fish, salmon and topped with a homemade aioli sauce. We serve it with crusty bread, a hearty green salad, and various exotic cheeses from the market. We wanted to stick with a game bird for Christmas dinner but since there was only going to be 5 of us sharing in our celebratory feast we opted for a capon which is smaller than a turkey but more succulent and flavourful.

Capons are rooster chicks which are surgically de-sexed (think circumsized) at three weeks of age to neutralize the muscular development of the birds and contribute to the tenderness and flavor of mature birds. The birds are well-fed (but not force fed) for 4 months until they weigh about 8-10 lbs. We sought out a local organic capon which wasn't fed growth boosters, hormones or other stimulants. Mom stuffed its cavity with breadcrumbs, dried fruit and nuts. The meat was richer, less dry, and more intense than a turkey. We served it with traditional sides and lots of homemade chutneys and cranberry sauce. The only hesitation I had was grabbing a wing and noticing enormous long spirals of hair jutting out from the skin. Organic - yeah, plucking job - not so yeah.